Hash S.
Yelp
What a fitting embodiment of Hillsboro government's overall worldview.
Flanked by a highway, strip malls, wetlands and tech factory smokestacks, Hillsboro Stadium and the Gordon Faber sports complex's only redeeming quality was its use as a public good. Youth programs, rec leagues, Portland State and even semi-pro teams used its playing fields and parking lots as both venues and vital third spaces--gathering places that didn't necessarily involve buying a product.
By 2025, three of those playing surfaces will be gone: Replaced by a Live Nation venue that will draw whatever acts Edgefield, Moda Center, Grand Lodge and Ridgefield reject and will host a Single-A ball club that, as of a recent Wednesday, drew fewer than 900 people to a 10 year old ballpark that fits 4,500. This new venue will cost $120 million and will use state, county and city tax dollars to fund events that will all charge admission. The "old" ballpark will stay up, because why tear down a car dealer's dream?
Since the Hillsboro Hops arrived on the stadium grounds in 2013, their attendance has plummeted, their inability to promote Timbers 2 events drove that team back to Providence Park, their stint as temporary home to the Vancouver Canadians resulted in fewer than 500 people showing up for each game... yet their monopoly on these public grounds has only increased.
Why? What public good have they contributed? How did they help youth soccer teams or the Fighting Shockwave? What support did they give one of Hillsboro's most prodigious sports--softball--whatsoever?
None of that matters. The greying elders of Hillsboro government find the owner to be a "nice guy" and will hand him whatever he desires (including whatever tourism funds he needs from the country tourism board he somehow chairs). They fast tracked a publicly funded stadium without any public input--and without even consulting their own city's parks department--and have decided that these public playfields would be better served as private venues for Poison and Matchbox 20 shows.
As excellent as those stage lights will look as they reflect off the steam of the Linde scrubbers and bounce off of the thick haze produced by the nearby Intel plant at Ronler Acres, Hillsboro Stadium and Gordon Faber just won't be a place that much of Hillsboro uses anymore. It'll be a monument to a handful of people's dreams of playing in the big leagues and providing a big-time destination by the highway.
I hate to say it, folks, but if they aren't gathering under the high tension towers for Hops games now, no amount of REO Speedwagon shows will bring them to this joyless, transit-barren waste in the future.